UPDATED January 13th: this article is being updated regularly 

Haven’t we Seen this For a While Now?

This may sound similar to what you have seen over the past while where certain results had a profile shot of a friend next to them because your friend had recently given it a social nod (liked, +1′d, etc.) but this is far more intense. The new additions are opt-out only and include any of the following content showing in results if it is relevant: images, video, and websites. In addition, these results can also include semi-private and private content such as content shared with you via a limited circle in Google Plus or directly from someone in your network; note that does not mean this is visible to anyone else on Google so don’t get freaked about privacy unless you plan on leaving your browser logged in to your Google profile.

Here is the official (and rather cool) video Google used to demonstrate the functionality all Google users will soon see:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The biggest and most alarming takeaway here is that the only social content found within these socialized search results is that of Google Plus! That’s right, Google did not include one iota of content from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or any other social platform. Their excuse is painfully simple and transparent; the others won’t let them spider their content to that degree (the simple part) and Google is whacking them over the head for it (the transparent part). Welcome to a classic case of cause and effect except in this case Google has tread heavily on dangerous ground.

So, based on this news did you pick up how Google just dropped its pants for its competitors? The outright antitrust implications of Google integrating its own social network into supposedly neutral search results without catering to the competition – the pants loosen. The full bare arse is revealed when Google made this new functionality opt-out by default; in other words you are in whether you like it or not until you manually remove yourself. This, in my opinion is the dumbest move imaginable and has the social industry quickly aiming at Google’s privates.

Here are a few examples of the rush of heated headlines spurned by this news:

• Twitter Really, Really Hates Google’s New Google+ Integration by Jason Kincaid at Tech Crunch
• Twitter: Google+ Integration In Google Search Is “Bad” For Everyone by Matt McGee, Marketing Land
• “Search, Plus Your World As Long as it is Our World” by John Battelle
• “Twitter Dumps on Google for Pushing Google+ in Search” by Liz Gannes of AllThingsDigital
• Many more are found here (this link will show the latest) courtesy of TechMeme

What Google Could Have Done to Minimize Anti-Trust Exposure

I don’t understand when a company willingly puts itself in the path of legal harm which Google clearly has done by not including its competitors in Search Plus; perhaps it is just another clear example of corporations having too much money to care. At any rate, I would have done one or both of the following options to minimize exposure:

1. Included the content that Google does have access to from the other social platforms. For example, they can index public information from any of the platforms; there is a lot to be had and we see it often in everyday searches on Google. By adding this information they would have the ability to say, “well we would love to include more but we need to create better relationships with each company to get more of that data.” At least that position would have held more water than simply not trying which opens a downright palatial foothold for an antitrust lawsuit.
2. Not everyone has a Google Profile but the advantages of having one is made abundantly clear if you want to take advantage of Google’s vast array of free applications. Since Google’s entire future strategy relies critically upon pushing Google Profiles it just makes sense to make Search Plus a very bold opt-in option when signing up.  And for those who already have a Profile, just use ads to push the benefits of Search Plus and make it dirt simple to enable the option. Chances are that many will take the option and by going this route Google is free and clear of antitrust; at least I think so based on my admittedly puny knowledge of law.

Living With Google Search Plus

One key request I have for Google: there needs to be a way to specify which circles I want to appear in results – that way I and fellow Google Plus users can create and monitor noisier circles within Google Plus without polluting our Search Plus results.

So what do you think? Should Google have rolled this out differently to not offend any of the social platforms or do you figure (as I do with some inner conflict) the other social platforms can shut their collective whining pie holes for not being more open with their data in the first place?

UPDATE #1 (Jan 12): Google Search Plus the World is provoking a lot of discussion so here are some related articles to check out that have been released since this article was posted:

Google Search Plus Your World – Cause and Effect (updated Jan 13) is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Micro Searching

Micro searching is a great way of connecting and reaching out across social media to increase your audience. These searches include different twists on the classic search and each of which will be explained individually.

Geo- Targeting: Being able to locate people and updates which have been sent within an “X mile radius” really does mean you can restrict your searches to only the most relevant distances and topics for you. Fantastic if you are holding an event in a town and want to get locals involved or if you have a product that you need local people to buy or use. MarketMeSuite is social media dashboard which lets you have all of your social network accounts in one place. And, most importantly, lets you target your tweet searches to location and using specific words using a feature called “Reply Campaigns”. You can target within 1000 miles of a specific location. All you have to do is type in either the city, county, zip code, postal code to get location of your choice. The keyword selection also means you can target the words that you feel will be most used in your niche topic.

Keyword Searching: Tools like MarketMeSuite also allow you to do a simply generic keyword search rather than just a place and a specific niche. Keyword following is a tool that allows you to use our smart algorithm to suggest real people  -not automated bots, tweeting, or spammers – all based on the keyword and language you enter. This brings in all tweets from world wide so you can find a selection of people to follow and interact with. It’s always useful to be known in as many places as possible to get your business to expand. It is beneficial because you have 100% control over what you search for and who you interact with from the results. Whether you just tweet them or follow them, it’s a great way increasing your online presence and getting your product noticed by the masses!

The Importance Of Social Search is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Our offices will be closed on Monday January 2nd, and we will be back into the full swing of things on Tuesday Jan 03 to kick off another great year.

We at StepForth want to wish everyone a very safe and happy New Year!

Happy New Year! is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

A Google Places listing is claimed and filled out by your business. However,  in order to fully optimize your profile, you need to acquire reviews from your past customers.

As business owners, requesting reviews from satisfied customers is one of the best ways you can establish trust with those interested in pursuing your business. Why is that?  Because it’s not just your business telling a potential customer how great you are and what wonderful things you can do for them.  External sources happy with your business create authority, believability, and a sense of security that you are in fact what you say you are.  Google Places reviews are authenticated because the person leaving it actually needs to be signed into their own Google account (giving it that much more clout with Google).  The following are a few tips when prompting clients to leave you reviews on Google Places.

Make it Easy

Often people do want to spread the word about how great your business is but don’t want to be hassled much to do so. If you lay out the steps of HOW to submit a testimonial in a clear and concise manner, it becomes obvious it won’t take much time and you’ve eliminated the possibility of them having to research how to go about doing it.

Here are the steps that you can pass along to your customers to enter a testimonial for your business:

• Go to Google
• Click on “Maps”
• Type in the business name and location indicator (eg. StepForth Web Marketing, Victoria BC)
• Click on the correct business
• Click “Write a Review”
• Log in using your Gmail account
• Choose the amount of stars, fill in the testimonial and click “Publish.”

Make it Clear what you want Included in the Testimonial

Ask the testimonial provider to include specifics within the testimonial. A “they did a great job” isn’t very valuable to someone interested in your services. Get them to write about details such as: customer service experience, timeliness of work completed, above and beyond moments, etc… Making light suggestions of details to include will often be appreciated.

Make sure the Timing is Right

If you are working with someone over a long period of time, ask them during that first “we like this guy” moment in the beginning of the working relationship. If it’s a quick job, ask when it has just been completed.

Make sure you Thank the Testimonial Provider

Acquiring testimonials for your Google Places profile is a huge benefit to your business. Make sure those that are assisting you with this know their assistance is appreciated.

Why you want Google Places Testimonials and Tips for Getting Them is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Related query results refinements:

Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”

What this means to you: theoretically this improvement in search quality would minimize unqualified traffic to your website if you happen to be getting some. For example, using the example above if you were selling “red widgets” but not “rare red widgets” (what the person searched for) then the traffic your site may received before this update would have had a high bounce rate or at least a nearly non-existent conversion rate. On the flip side, if you were making sales by selling users on another product while they searched for a competing product then your sales could be negatively impacted by this algorithm update.

More comprehensive indexing:

This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.

What this means to you: this is excellent news for websites with a lot of quality content spanning their field of expertise. Why? Because such sites often have detailed articles on the minutiae of their business/industry which can only be found within long tail searches (lesser searched phrases longer than a couple of words). With this update there should be a better incidence of other content on these sites to attract traffic. Furthermore, if you do not have a lot of content this is a great incentive to build additional content for your website so you can benefit from more longtail search traffic.

New “parked domain” classifier:

This is a new algorithm for automatically detecting parked domains. Parked domains are placeholder sites that are seldom useful and often filled with ads. They typically don’t have valuable content for our users, so in most cases we prefer not to show them.

What this means to you: this is one of the best pieces of news from this entire update! Google is saying we will see less and less search results from websites that are often only placeholders full of poorly written content and advertisements. So not only will your search experience improve but any reduction in garbage listings in the top Google search results will provide more opportunity for increased visibility… never a bad thing!!

More autocomplete predictions: 

With autocomplete, we try to strike a balance between coming up with flexible predictions and remaining true to your intentions. This change makes our prediction algorithm a little more flexible for certain queries, without losing your original intention.

What this means to you: at this point how this will effect search is unknown because determining just how slight the changes in autocomplete will change user results requires a lot of historical autocomplete results that I do not have. That said, if anything comes up that is report-able I will certainly follow-up with an addendum to this section.

Fresher and more complete blog search results: 

We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both fresher and more comprehensive.

What this means to you: content writers with a regular stream of writing have yet more reason to rejoice as this update is meant to give their quality content more exposure; particularly fresh content. To take advantage of this enhancement you will need to make sure you keep a steady stream of writing – do not let your blog stale.

Original content: 

We added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.

What this means to you: for anyone who writes quality content and gets annoyed when another website copies it and gets top rankings for it (even by legitimately reposting it – with credit) then you will appreciate any improvement in Google’s algorithm that furthers its ability to determine which site wrote the content first. You see, ideally, Google will give the link and ranking credit to the site that first wrote an article but the fact is if a larger, more trafficked website re-posts your article… they will get the bulk of the exposure.

Live results for Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League: 

This change displays the latest scores & schedules from these leagues along with quick access to game recaps and box scores.

What this means to you: if you have a sports related website then this kind of increased sports information functionality on Google will, theoretically, capture the attention of more sports enthusiasts resulting in more sports-related searches which you can target in your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. There is also the added indication that Google is focusing on enhancing the timeliness of its search data to become more of a resource for up-to-the-minute news which also increases user engagement and could increase (or at least firm-up) Google’s share of online search.

Image result freshness: 

We made a change to how we determine image freshness for news queries. This will help us find the freshest images more often.

What this means to you: Google is saying they are getting better at finding the latest images for news stories within Google News. From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective this increases the importance of using descriptive keywords in the filenames of images and within ALT attributes on images placed in articles/blog posts on your website. The more accurate your image descriptive data is the more likely your photo/image could be used in the highly trafficked Google News.

Layout on tablets: 

We made some minor color and layout changes to improve usability on tablet devices.

What this means to you: this is a great reminder to crank up your mobile priorities to ensure your website is usable on mobile devices or at least has a mobile alternative. Here is handy post from Mashable with a list of 8 tools for easily creating a mobile version of your website. Note I do not necessarily recommend these products but they are a good start; ideally you would have a site professionally created just for mobile or your site would be adjusted to work for mobile.

Top result selection code rewrite: 

This code handles extra processing on the top set of results. For example, it ensures that we don’t show too many results from one site (“host crowding”). We rewrote the code to make it easier to understand, simpler to maintain and more flexible for future extensions.

What this means to you: I don’t know about you but I despise seeing any ranking where a single company takes the bulk of the top rankings edging out all competition. There are no reasons why such a thing should take place and I love that Google is keeping a close eye on this issue to minimize occasions where this happens. For you as a business owner this is great news as well since it means your competitors are not likely to achieve more than a single top ranking for a given keyphrase which gives you space to move up into the highest click areas (the top 5 rankings).

That is it for this month’s update from Google. Be sure to subscribe to our web marketing blog for a demystification of future Google Algorithm Updates or like us on Facebook to be notified of new content.

Dec 1st 2011 Google Algorithm Update Demystified is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

What is Foursquare’s new “Save” button for and how does it work?

Foursquare’s new save button is meant for websites of businesses with physical locations (such as shops, restaurants, tourist activities, etc. ) in order to allow online users to add the location to their queue of places to visit next time they are in that geographic area. The idea is quite brilliant and I predict it will have the necessary kick to move Foursquare into bigger leagues sooner than later. This positive outlook for Foursquare is greatly improved from my impression of the service (which I was an early adopter of) over the past while; which has been lackluster at best since Facebook and Google launched similar check-in services.

A quick sideline: what is Foursquare? You would be easily forgiven for not knowing much if anything about this company because it has largely been an app-driven service for smartphones. Here is a bit of background from their About Page:

Foursquare is a location-based mobile platform that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. By “checking in” via a smartphone app or SMS, users share their location with friends while collecting points and virtual badges. Foursquare guides real-world experiences by allowing users to bookmark information about venues that they want to visit and surfacing relevant suggestions about nearby venues. Merchants and brands leverage the foursquare platform by utilizing a wide set of tools to obtain, engage, and retain customers and audiences.

What is the advantage of the Foursquare Save button for businesses?

Foursquare explains this best in their news release:

When readers use the ‘save to foursquare’ button, the saved places will show up in their foursquare app with your branding, along with a link back to the original article on your site. Find out how to add the button to your site here.

In addition to this, consider that Foursquare’s button is the perfect compliment for your physical business if it tends to convert visitors to customers better in-person because it will increase the likelihood your physical location will get visits from those who found your business online. Taking this a step further, in my opinion Foursquare is setting itself up nicely as the social media leader of converting online traffic into offline business which means this button will be a MUST for all bricks & mortar establishments with an online presence.

Here is an example of the button on a profile shown on New York Magazine’s website:

This is a 12 second clip showing the button in action (I have no idea why Foursquare didn’t jazz this up a bit):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here are some sites who already have the Foursquare button in-place: Time Out Boston, CBS’s list of “The Best Burgers in New York”,  Frommer’s Travel.

The Foursquare Save Button Arrives to Improve Sales Offline is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

In short, the bulk of the navigation will now appear in a drop-down menu which will appear whenever you hover over the Google logo. The area which once had the toolbar will now be a static area for searching the specific Google application you are currently utilizing and to see any Google Plus notices as they arrive. Here is the video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What do you think of this change-up? It is fairly significant but my take is I like the simplicity and usability of the change.

Google is Getting a Redesign is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Happy American Thanksgiving!! is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

In addition, I know Gil personally and was convinced he would give a great presentation and indeed he did. To that end, you can view his presentation in all its glory below.

Oh and don’t forget to check out LifeasaHuman.com – it is great for those after work hours when you want to escape into some wonderful writing and with 80 authors there is a lot to choose from!

Please Note this presentation is over one hour and twenty minutes long in one sitting. So in order to watch the entire presentation you may want to review it in pieces. If that is the case, here are some links to allow you to watch it 20 minutes at a time via YouTube: start, the 20 min mark, the 40 min mark, the 60 min mark.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Links from the Secrets Behind Building a Successful Website

Gil noted a few areas of interest which we have included below for your convenience!

• Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute
  This is a must read about the 90-9-1 rule.
• Tweet, Stumble and Ping: Driving Traffic with Social Media
• How many page-views are you really getting? Part 1 – The WordPress Stats Test
• Also, here is an article StepForth’s own Ashley Melsted wrote about StumbleUponthat ties in well with Gil’s discussion around StumbleUpon advertising:
  Could Stumbleupon be an Overlooked Treasure? - Benefits of Stumbleupon and Advertising with this platform

Secrets Behind Building a Successful Website is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

On average, people spend 69 minutes on a session; that’s more than three times the average time on Facebook! What’s most interesting is the longevity of a link on the site. The average half-life is exponentially larger than Twitter (2.8 hours) and Facebook (3.2 hours) at an astonishing 400 hours.The reason behind this is Twitter and Facebook get bombarded with new information on a streaming basis where the old stuff gets pushed to the bottom and if you aren’t glued to the site all day, posts will get missed. However, content on StumbleUpon, gets categorized so when a new viewer wants to view information in a particular category, the page will show up. And if it is “liked” by its viewers, it’ll show up even more.

StumbleUpon offers advertising which is looking more and more desirable as the above stats continue to improve. By purchasing a sponsored stumble, advertisers can get their webpage to appear more often in the stumble cycle. Although a sponsored stumble guarantees a certain number of page views, the higher rated your ad is, the more likely it is to be stumbled upon.  StumbleUpon delivers the right audience to your site by allowing you to target the page by category, location, demographic, and device.  They also give you access to a report on how many people saw your site, and how many voted your page up and down.  Advertising is relatively cheap with a standard price of $0.10 per visit and you don’t actually need to create an ad, just a page to send people to.

Some have voiced their concerns in the past about advertising with StumbleUpon, or even submitting their blog posts because the site will most likely increase your bounce rate. People are concerned that if they received an influx in traffic generating a high bounce rate, Google will discredit their site and it will affect their rankings. After discussing this with our SEO specialists I know this is false but even without their help I do know Google isn’t stupid . Even if Google could detect the bounces it has a pretty clear idea of what StumbleUpon is and how it works; it’s a discovery engine built to show you things you may not have otherwise ‘discovered.” It’s expected your bounce rate will increase. And surprisingly, according to StumbleUpon, the average stumble page view lasts 14 seconds longer than the average web page view (not bad).  I wouldn’t let this probability dissuade you in the least.

My advice to you, look into pursuing StumbleUpon advertising or ask for help. It’s affordable, unique, and could generate a mass amount of exposure for your website with the right content.

Lastly: Here is a great infographic from StumbleUpon illustrating the statistics I noted above.

Could StumbleUpon Advertising be an Overlooked Treasure? is a post from: StepForth Web Marketing Inc.